“How despicably I have acted!”she cried;“I,who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities!who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable mistrust! How humiliating is this discovery!Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love,I could not have been more wretchedly blind! But vanity,not love,has been my folly.Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance,I have courted prepossession and ignorance,and driven reason away,where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself.”
She grew absolutely ashamed of herself.Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think without feeling she had been blind, partial,prejudiced,absurd.
When she came to that part of the letter in which her family were mentioned in terms of such mortifying, yet merited reproach,her sense of shame was severe.The justice of the charge struck her too forcibly for denial,and the circumstances to which he particularly alluded as having passed at the Netherfield ball, and as confirming all his first disapprobation, could not have made a stronger impression on his mind than on hers.
After wandering along the lane for two hours, giving way to every variety of thought―re-considering events, determining probabilities, and reconciling herself, as well as she could, to a change so sudden and so important, fatigue, and a recollection of her long absence, made her at length return home; and she entered the house with the wish of appearing cheerful as usual, and the resolution of repressing such reflections as must make her unfit for conversation.